


parallelogram

by jolach



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Casual Ableism, M/M, Stanley Cup Celebrations, fewer khia references than you would expect, flashfic, mention of underage crushes, one big sexy family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 02:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15257145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach
Summary: “Have you seen Kuzma yet?”“Not yet,” Sanya says, finishing the martini, eyes still on the Cup.





	parallelogram

**Author's Note:**

> noted cryptid alexander semin appeared at ovi's cup party and flashfic was the inevitable result

SASHA

 

It may have been a while, but Sasha has years of experience spotting the shifting peripheral movement that heralds his arrival. Sanya Semin couldn’t hide from him if he tried.

Sasha weaves to the edge of the crowd, only stopping for three hugs and two pictures before he gets to wrap his arms around him. Sanya could have bolted if he wanted. He never does. Sasha squeezes him hard anyway.

“Beautiful bastard,” Sasha says. He’s maybe a little thinner. Sasha pulls back to take his face in both his hands and get a good look at him as Sanya rolls his eyes minutely. Barely aged, the monster. Sasha is graying for two. “I love you. Thank you for coming. Let me get you a drink.”

“Two,” Sanya says. Sasha grins. “Going to need them.”

Sasha hooks an arm around his neck and starts pulling him toward the nearest bar. There are three within sight, not counting the one on the mezzanine. Moscow knows how to throw a party. “If you did not want to be here, you would not be here,” Sasha says.

The feeling of Sanya under his arm, like so many moments of the past month, feels like a neat bit of time travel. Sasha has been sliding to age seventeen and back again once or twice a day. That’s OK. He’s missed it.

He’s missed Sanya. What a gift, that Sasha has so much of what he’s wanted for so long and has Sanya here, too, ordering two martinis like an asshole.

Sasha fixes him with a look when the bartender delivers them, and Sanya doesn’t protest as Sasha takes one for himself. “Do you want to see it?” Sasha asks.

This time it’s Sanya who gives Sasha a look, mouth turning down at the corners in a silent laugh. Sasha half-chokes on the martini and then belly-laughs until Sanya finally breaks. How old had Sasha even been, that first time in the bath house? Nineteen?

“I’d like to think I’ve gotten smoother since then,” Sasha says.

“Could not be worse,” Sanya says, slicing a grin before drinking down half his martini. Sasha takes a moment to feel very, very nineteen.

“Worked on you,” Sasha says. Sanya hooks a finger through his belt loop and tugs, affectionate. Sasha will love him for his whole life. “Do you want to see the Cup?”

They stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of it, just looking for a minute. Sasha makes it a whole twenty seconds before wrapping an arm around Sanya’s shoulders again and resting their heads together. He’s a little drunk, and he can do what he wants. And he’s missed having someone the exact right size around.

“I’m happy for you,” Sanya says. “You deserve this, Sasha.”

“So do you,” Sasha says, which he knows probably hurts as much as anything else. But it’s true, and even if it’s been a while, the two of them are past anything but the truth. “Have you seen Kuzma yet?”

“Not yet,” Sanya says, finishing the martini, eyes still on the Cup.

“He’ll be happy to see you,” Sasha says, digging his thumb into the tight muscle in Sanya’s neck. He will. Sasha doesn’t understand the two of them, or even either of them individually, sometimes, but he is blessed with the gift of loving without understanding. He knows what makes them happy even if he’s never quite grasped why. “He misses you.”

Sanya snorts. “Oh, he tells you that, does he?”

Shithead. Sasha knocks their heads together a little. “Doesn’t have to say anything. Just look at the nonsense he does on the ice.” A horrible thought strikes him. “You watched the games, didn’t you?”

Sanya frowns, still looking at the Cup. “Fuck you. Of course I did.”

Sasha lets out a breath. “Good.” He lets the sight of the Cup wash over him again. “He’ll be happy,” he says again.

Sanya smiles, now, looking away from the Cup at last. “He’s a champion, of course he’s happy,” he says. “Should celebrate, not worry about entertaining an old man.”

Sasha is groaning before he even finishes the sentence. “Oh, write an opera about it or something, Sanya,” he says, shoving his martini into his hand. “Drink your drink, find him, say hello. He’s a grown man, you know that?”

Sanya laughs and shakes his head, but he does start to look around the room, at least.

“Oh, yes,” he says, eyes snagging on something. “Very grown up.”

Kuzma is on the dance floor with—God, no, Sasha’s eyes are not failing him. That really is Mike Vogel. Kuzma seems to be trying to waltz.

Sasha squints. He’s not bad, actually.

Sanya is smiling with his whole face. Sasha can see more of the lines now.

“If you weren’t so late, that could be you,” Sasha says, and then ruffles a hand through Sanya’s hair as he splutters. “Fucking fly across the country to pretend you want to hide. Yeah, right. You’re full of shit,” Sasha says. He looks at his phone. It’s almost cake time. “You know what you’re gonna do?” he says, starting to walk toward the kitchen to check on things. He points back at Sanya, alone and laughing by the Cup. “You’re gonna sing with me later, motherfucker! Just wait!”

 

* * *

 

DIMA

 

The thing is—

What is the thing? Dima had had a thing.

Dima blinks hard and looks around the room, trying to remember what the thing was. They’ve got highlights on the screen again. Maybe it should be weird to be at a party with videos of yourself on the wall. Probably more of this should be weird than is.

They play Kuzma’s winner against Pittsburgh again and Dima whoops for the thousandth time.

Right! Yes.

The thing is, Kuzma worries about the wrong things. The things Kuzma worries about make no sense.

If he were just shy, like a person, it wouldn’t matter. Lots of people don’t like getting drunk in public. Plenty of people don’t want to do sexy dancing in front of all their friends and families. Those people are idiots, but they’re true to themselves, and Dima doesn’t mind.

And he won’t pretend that it isn’t a little fun, trying to get just ridiculous enough that Kuzma’s face and resistance collapse and he joins in, laughing his big helpless laugh. Kuzma’s laugh possess him like a. Like a goofy demon.

But it is—OK, and Dima’s pretty drunk, he’ll admit it, but, _but_ —it is ridiculous that Kuzma is a prima donna about dancing to a song about eating ass when Dima has _seen the man do it._

Kuzma laughs during sex, too, but it’s different, pure delight and no fear. The laugh of a different demon. Dima saw him laugh in Ovi’s face with Ovi’s hand on his dick in the bath house. Nothing he does makes any goddamn sense.

Dima would rather go out and skate a game naked than do half the interviews Kuzma does. Kuzma says shit out loud _to reporters_ that Dima loses sleep over. Kuzma tries things on the ice purely because they’re beautiful and that’s the only god he serves. Kuzma kissed Dima for the first time when they’d barely known each other two weeks. But Kuzma gets embarrassed during karaoke and has to be teased into dancing unless he’s teasing someone else and right now, _right now,_ in front of Dima, Kuzma is letting Sanya Semin get away with fucking murder.

Well, Semin’s not doing anything, but that’s—that’s _it,_ he’s not doing _anything,_ just sitting at the table with Kuzma and twisting his glass in his hands and barely even _talking_ while Kuzma sits there with his head pillowed on his arms and listens.

Dima had asked about it one time. Maybe two times. Dima wants to know everything about Kuzma, and at this point he mostly does.

“He the one who taught you this?” Dima had said, braced above him in bed, and Kuzma had facewashed him and rolled his eyes extravagantly.

“Wasn’t like that,” he’d said, defensive, but not of himself. “He was older. I was just a kid.”

“But you _like_ him,” Dima had said, grinning. “Oh, Semin, he’s so _handsome,_ his hockey’s so _pretty_ —” and then Kuzma had smacked him with a pillow and Dima had had to hold him down and then the conversation had been over.

Except since then there’s been how many fucking years of, fucking, whatever it is, and Dima is over it. He doesn’t mind seeing Kuzma have a different relationship with somebody else than he has with Dima. Dima gets so much. Dima minds seeing Kuzma light up every time Semin wanders off of the fucking taiga and nobody doing a goddamn thing with it.

One of the many benefits of being a Stanley Cup champion is that when he goes over to the Cup and grabs it, nobody stops him.

Half of Semin’s drink spills when Dima puts the Cup down heavily on their table.

 

* * *

 

SANYA

 

“Hi, Sema,” Orlov says. The man is enviably sloshed. “We won.”

There’s vodka on Sanya’s arm. He picks a napkin up from the table and wipes it off. “Well done.” He doesn’t know Orlov as well—they’ve spent time together, of course. But just in groups. Most of what he knows he’s heard from Zhenya. Zhenya likes him very much. Then again, Zhenya likes Sanya very much.

Sanya’s sure Orlov is fun. And he can’t help but appreciate anybody willing to fuck around this much in front of this many cameras. Sanya would, nonetheless, prefer to continue talking to Zhenya.

Or just sitting, not talking, with Zhenya, which is mostly what they have been doing. Sanya still feels exposed, sitting here in his t-shirt with nothing, but Zhenya has some stupid plaid shirt on himself and doesn’t seem to realize that he’s wasting his time at this table.

“Kuzma’s a Stanley Cup champion,” Orlov says, and raises his eyebrows like this is meant to mean something in particular.

It’s true. Zhenya’s a champion. Sanya knows. It’s one of Sanya’s current favorite thoughts. Sanya looks over at him to see if he can explain his other half, but Zhenya isn’t looking back at him. Zhenya is looking at Orlov with the flat, focused expression that means he’s considering doing something uncivilized. He may be bigger now, but Sanya’s still a little scared he’s gonna jump on Orlov like a spider monkey.

“Oh, shut up,” Orlov says, brushing off the look. This, Sanya finds truly impressive. Then Orlov turns back to him. “Kuzma’s a champion, and he’s twenty-six, and I don’t know how old you are, but it can’t be _that_ old.”

What?

Orlov looks like he’s got a few more pieces of nonsense to unload, but then the music changes. “And—oh, shit,” he says, looking back toward the dance floor. “Oh, hell yes, I have to—listen, just, think about it,” he says, and then he’s gone, dancing through the crowd.

Sanya takes a moment to watch him go, and then turns back to Zhenya. Zhenya has his face in his hands, half-laughing in the bad way.

So Orlov knows something Sanya doesn’t.

“Hey,” Sanya says. _Laugh in the good way._ It’s what he flew here for.

Zhenya leans back in his chair, two front legs off the floor, and makes a frustrated noise.

Sanya resists the urge to push the chair down flat again. “Hey. I know you who you are.” He loves who Zhenya is, and he’s never doubted that for a second. Zhenya was a better person than Sanya was when Zhenya was ten. Zhenya has always been a champion. Sanya’s mostly just pleased that the world got something right for once.

“No, I know,” Zhenya says. “I know you do.” The look on his face isn’t right. Sanya can usually fix that, on the ice or in his car or in a tiny apartment for one above a rink. Sanya doesn’t know what to do about it in a ballroom. Sanya needs a cigarette. Sanya should have worn a nicer shirt. Sanya shouldn’t have come.

“I’m sorry,” Zhenya says, which isn’t right at all, and then he smiles very, very big, and then he stands up. “I’ll be right back.” Sanya watches him walk away. He better not be fucking smoking. Zhenya never stops moving, anyway, Sanya wouldn’t be able to spot if he was jonesing.

“Hey!” a voice snaps his head back around. Sasha, huge and looming with his hands on the Cup. He’s probably got a homing instinct for it. Probably has his whole life. “Idiot. This is my party, and you are ruining the fucking vibe. Go fix it,” he says, jerking his head after Zhenya. “If either of you keeps being a baby I will make you sing twice.” He picks the cup up and head back towards the dance floor.

Sanya glares at his back. He’ll do it, too, is the thing.

Sanya grabs Zhenya’s mostly-full glass of rosé, drains half of it, and goes to find his best friend.

 

* * *

 

ZHENYA

 

He’ll do one lap. He’ll do one lap of the building, and then he’ll go find Sanya again. Any longer, and Sanya might run. Any less, and Zhenya’s brain won’t have settled.

Good joke. His brain hasn’t settled all night, even before he’d come. Sasha hadn’t told him. It’s a good surprise, the best, even if it set Zhenya spinning off out of orbit.

He’s halfway through the lap when he turns around a corner and Sanya pops out from behind a column like Dracula.

“Jesus Christ—”

“—I’m sorry, I only—”

“—scare the fucking shit out of me, Sanya, Lugosi motherfucker—”

“—can I talk to you?” Sanya says, and that pulls Zhenya up short.

“Yes,” he says, and waits.

Sanya does not seem to have prepared beyond that. This is more familiar. And it lets Zhenya look at him a little, Sanya standing there, still slippery and the same. Zhenya can still remember running home and telling his mother that he’d found a movie star with filthy skills and that he was going to keep him if that was OK. Zhenya thinks he’s done a pretty good job.

Winning the Stanley Cup: probably the hardest. Getting to the NHL: very hard. Keeping Sanya: unfinished, but still pretty high up there.

“Fuck, I’m so glad you’re here,” he says.

When Sanya changes expression it’s like every piece of his face moves one at a time, independent of the other. Zhenya can guess, usually, what will go first. The eyebrows, the eyes, the smile, like Sanya has to think about each one. Rusty. Big clay robot that lets Zhenya play with him.

Sanya looks surprised. Slowly.

Then he grabs Zhenya, gently, by the arm, and pulls him into a closet.

It’s dark, one lightbulb. There’s a bucket.

“I know you’re not a kid,” Sanya says, blunt and lit from above.

“Did you look for a closet and then just wait for me?” Zhenya asks, looking around. Sanya doesn’t normally plan that far ahead. Zhenya hadn’t figured out until about 22 that it was odd that he’d been in charge of Sanya. He still thinks it works better this way.

“You were probably the best kid there’s ever been. But I know that’s not you anymore,” Sanya says, ignoring him. He’s good at that. Zhenya feels a little more settled. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like—I don’t know,” Sanya says, trailing off.

“It’s OK,” Zhenya says, because it is. If he’d known Dima was going to try to defend his honor he would have tried to redirect that into a roleplay or something. Zhenya knows who Sanya is. Zhenya has lived with Sanya turning his phone off for six months at a time more than once. It’s OK. He’s here, now. Someone is here who knows. “I know who I am, too. Don’t worry.”

Zhenya doesn’t think Sanya knows everything about him. But with him here—almost every bit of Zhenya is known by somebody in the building. That’s a good feeling.

Sanya puts his hands on Zhenya’s shoulders. Heavy, still. “If I miss those days, try to act like nothing’s changed, it’s not because I don’t like _you_ now,” he says. Zhenya knows how Sanya’s typical math fills in what he’s not saying.

Zhenya laughs. “I’m so fucking glad you’re here,” he says, again, and this time he pulls Sanya in, hard. He hears some of the breath driven out of Sanya’s lungs, and then his tiny laugh, hiding under Zhenya’s, and then Zhenya feels one of Sanya’s hands on the back of his head.

Zhenya keeps him for a minute.

The music is loud enough that Zhenya can still hear it through the walls, most of the melody even if it’s muffled. Sanya can hear it too, because he starts humming along. Zhenya grins into his shoulder. Then he starts singing, voice low and horribly off-key, and Zhenya has to laugh, again, too loud for the small space.

His terrible singing voice. It used to echo around the empty rink in the middle of the night. He’d sing Na-Na songs until Zhenya would laugh, and then he’d steal the puck from him, ruthless.

Sanya still likes his laugh. He starts swaying them back and forth. Just a little, just barely in time.

“You want to dance?” Zhenya says, still grinning in the mostly-dark.

“In here, with you, yes,” Sanya says, and his voice is full of humor but it isn’t joking. Zhenya agrees. “What, you’ll dance with fucking Vogs and not with me? Do I need to grow my hair out?”

Zhenya lets Sanya lean against him and sway. He’s done a lot of dancing this month. This is the best so far, Sanya’s arms wrapped around his neck and nobody watching.

Zhenya likes celebrating with his friends. Zhenya doesn’t like an audience. He doesn’t like thinking about what people might assume he wants them to think. He doesn’t like that he does think about it. He hates the irony that seeps into everything. It sends his mind in circles. Sanya has never attempted to interpret him. Sanya has just either been there or he’s been gone. Zhenya wishes more people were like that.

Though it made it a little harder, when Sanya had been gone, and then he had been back, and Zhenya had discovered exactly how much had changed and how much had not.

“Sorry we never danced before,” Sanya says, head tipped forward. “You should have a better partner.”

Sanya is Zhenya’s best friend and he’s been a fucking dumbass for fifteen years. “You think I’m so great but can’t pick for myself?” he says, bumping their heads together. “Maybe you do think I’m a baby still.”

“No,” Sanya says, firm.

“So you think I don’t know you, then,” Zhenya says, and he’s teasing, a little, even mostly, but Sanya’s hand on the back of his neck is dead serious.

“No,” Sanya says again, shaking his head. The music has changed, something fast and thumping, but Sanya keeps their rhythm steady. “Never.”

Zhenya swallows, then grins against his own will, face stretching. “Then you don’t want to, then.”

Sanya is quiet for a long time, just swaying. He’s so quiet, barely audible under the music: “That’s not true.”

No. It’s not. It would have been easier if it were. Zhenya’s a fool, but he’s not a liar, at least not to himself. “OK, then,” Zhenya says, and he’s still teasing, he is, except that he can feel himself shaking just a little under Sanya’s hands.

“Yes,” Sanya says. Then: “Yes?”

“Yes,” Zhenya says, and Sanya finds Zhenya’s mouth perfectly in the half-dark.

Dima is right. Zhenya is a champion. Zhenya is the king of this closet.

Sanya’s mouth is familiar, like all of him, and his hands have a mind of their own, ghosting over Zhenya’s face, his shoulders, his skull before Sanya pulls away. Zhenya wonders if Sanya needs to remember what he’s shaped like.

“Fuck,” he says, kissing Zhenya roughly on the cheek and pulling him close again. “I’m so glad you never ran away with me.”

Zhenya grins into the darkness. “You never asked.”

Sanya presses his face into Zhenya’s neck, warm and a little wet. “Did I never? Good,” he says, muffled.

Zhenya pulls him up and kisses him himself this time. Kissing Sanya is exactly as he knew it would be. He has missed this for so long.

Sanya pulls back again, damn him. “I still might,” he says. He kisses Zhenya, quick. “Say no.”

“I have to do all the work around here,” Zhenya says, mock-whining, and it works when Sanya kisses him to quiet him. That is a neat trick. Sanya will figure it out in about five minutes. It will still work.

Sanya slides his hands inside Zhenya’s flannel shirt and sighs into him.

Zhenya pulls back this time. “Come to Chelyabinsk,” he says. “For my day.”

Sanya grunts. He is always half an animal when he appears. “Should celebrate that day.”

Zhenya pokes him hard in the ribs to hear him giggle, suddenly human. “What do you think this is?” he says. “Gonna celebrate. Gonna celebrate in your _mouth,_ ” he says, and laughs loud at Sanya’s outraged noises. “I want you there, Sanya, really. You know I do. Stop. I’ll tell you every time, but I know that you know.”

Sanya puts his chin on Zhenya’s shoulder and hums. “I’ll try,” he says, finally.

“Good,” Zhenya says, “Because I’ll come to Krasnoyarsk. I swear that I will.” He runs a hand down Sanya’s back. “Anytime you want. Or don’t want. When you least expect it.”

“I never expect you,” Sanya mutters, and Zhenya grins at the dark for a moment, cheeks aching, before pinching Sanya hard just to hear him yelp.

“Thank you,” Zhenya says, kissing him on the cheek one last time. “Now, come on,” he says. They could stay here. Zhenya has made love in worse places. But it is too dark, and Zhenya likes to see. “I want to hear you sing.”

“I’ll sing for you,” Sanya says, flexing his hands on Zhenya’s hips.

“Sing for me out there,” Zhenya says. “You can pretend it’s for Ovi, don’t worry.”

Sanya makes a tiny noise that means he’s rolling his eyes. He strokes his hand down the back of Zhenya’s skull. “He’ll know who it’s for.”

Zhenya shrugs in his arms. “Eh, so we make it up to him,” he says. Sanya snickers. “What? You jealous?”

Sanya squeezes the back of his neck and finally stands up straight. “Never and always,” he says conspiratorial. “But I owe him, the bastard.” He fumbles for the doorknob. “You ready?” he asks, half-turning the knob.

“Whenever you are,” Zhenya says, and he grins against the light.

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to angularmomentum and kingsoftheimpossible for a) infecting me with sema love in the first place and b) indulging me in this tangent while i avoid working on other WIPS. comments are the food of love. on tumblr @ hyggles.


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